For many years agricultural balers have been used to consolidate and package crop material so as to facilitate the storage and handling of the crop material for later use. Usually, a mower-conditioner cuts and conditions the crop material for windrow drying in the sun. When the cut crop material is properly dried, a baler, most likely a round baler, is pulled along the windrows to pick up the crop material and form it into cylindrically-shaped round bales. More specifically, the pickups of the baler gather the cut and windrowed crop material from the ground then convey the cut crop material into a bale-forming chamber within the baler. The pickup assembly has a drive mechanism that operates to activate both the pickups, augers, and a rotor, and the pickup drive mechanism may be operably connected to and driven by the main drive mechanism of the baler. A conventional baling chamber may consist of a pair of opposing sidewalls with a series of belts that rotate and compress the crop material into a cylindrical shape. When the bale has achieved a desired size and density, the operator may wrap the bale to ensure that the bale maintains its shape and density. The operator ejects the bale from the baler and onto the ground by, for example, raising the tailgate of the baler. The tailgate is then dosed and the cycle repeated as necessary and desired to manage the field of cut crop material.
The rotor conveyor mechanism (“rotor” or “rotor mechanism”) between the pickup and the bale-forming chamber is, itself, known in the prior art, as shown, for example, in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,595,055 and 6,644,006. The rotor mechanism may comprise a stuffer or a rotor feeding mechanism that stuffs the crop material into the gap between the floor roll and the starter roll into the bale-forming chamber. A rotor and stuffer differ in the method of pushing the material—rotors use strictly a rotational motion while stuffers convert a rotating drive into linear crop motion.
In most conventional round balers with wide pickups, for example, augers are used to transfer crop from the outside portions of the pickups inward toward the bale chamber. Conventionally, all of the pick up tines are mounted in the round baler on the trailing side of the tine bar. For balers with a rotor feeding system, the augers need to be positioned some distance in from the front of the rotor in order for crop to be transferred from the augers to the rotor. The configuration results in an undesirable space or “dead area” where crop can lie without being contacted by either the pickup tines or the rotor (see e.g., FIG. 1). As a result, this area can fill up with crop material and cause plugs in the pickup and/or rotor. This may be especially problematic for light crop.
One way currently employed to reduce this “dead area” is to angle the tines in front of the rotor rearward so that they come closer to the rotor (see e.g., FIG. 2 showing the rotor tines having a straighter configuration as compared to the auger tines which are angled forward in the direction of travel). While this does reduce the “dead area” slightly, it is not sufficient to eliminate the problem. Also, modification of the rotor tines requires two different tine designs, resulting in manufacturing, inventory and maintenance issues.
What is needed is a solution that further reduces and/or substantially eliminates the “dead area” between the pickup and the rotor and that provides efficiencies in manufacturing, inventory and maintenance of the pickup equipment.